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A young academic moves from India to the United States, where she navigates first love, a green card marriage, single motherhood, and more in this "delightful novel, written with immediacy, warmth, and wry humor" (Ha Jin, National Book Award-winning author of Waiting).
Vega Gopalan is adrift. Still reeling from the death of her sister years earlier, she leaves South India to attend graduate school at Columbia University. In New York, Vega straddles many different worlds, eventually moving in and out of a series of relationships that take her through the striving world of academia, the intellectual isolation of the immigrant suburbs, and, ultimately, the loneliness of single motherhood. But it is the birth of Vega's daughter that forces the novel's central question: What does it mean to make a home?
Written with dry humor and searing insight, Habitations is an intimate story of identity, immigration, expectation and desire, and of love lost and found. But it is also a universal story of womanhood, and the ways in which women are forced to navigate multiple loyalties: to family, to community, and to themselves.
A profound meditation on the many meanings of home and on the ways love and kinship can be found, even in the most unfamiliar of places, Habitations introduces Sheila Sundar as an electrifying new voice in literary fiction.
"Sundar debuts with an earnest meditation on an Indian American graduate student's grief, loneliness, and longing...a fresh perspective on the pressures of motherhood and desire for self-fulfillment...This leaves readers with much to chew on." —Publisher's Weekly
"The story unfolds episodically, in a good way; in Sundar's hands, the scenes tumble together hypnotically. The book captures a moment in time—before smartphones and social media as we know them today—among a particular set of people who cross international borders for higher education and enticing opportunities." —Kirkus Reviews
"Sundar's debut novel is a wondrous mix of quiet heartache and unexpected hope, making it the best kind of literary fiction...Sundar's focus on the evolution of Vega's inner and outer lives through relationships brings a vitally important lens to the thematic preoccupations of roots, home, migrant identity, and motherhood. The crisp plot and uncluttered writing make Habitations a remarkable first novel." —Booklist
"Sheila Sundar's irresistible debut is a provocative meditation on grief, desire, and the unexpected ways the two entangle. Brimming with emotional intricacies, crisp prose, and sly humor, Habitations traverses the complicated, intimate politics and promises of the places we seek to call "home.'" —Deesha Philyaw, author of National Book Award Finalist The Secret Lives of Church Ladies
"Habitations is a delightful novel, written with immediacy, warmth, and wry humor. Covering dramas both personal and universal, Sundar offers insightful reflections on the desire for arrival and the longing for return. This is a significant addition to migrant fiction." —Ha Jin, author of National Book Award winner Waiting
This information about Habitations was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Sheila Sundar is a professor of English and creative writing at the University of Mississippi. Her writing has appeared in The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Massachusetts Review, The Threepenny Review, and elsewhere. She lives in New Orleans with her family. Habitations is her debut novel.
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